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Reviews Fire Emblem Engage | Review Thread

Awakening isn't a bad game, but I won't go to bat for the strength of its narrative. It rides on a loose connection to Marth's era with flimsy world building that doesn't really do a good job of establishing the link between the eras. Shadows of Valentia actually went in and retroactively addressed some of its bigger questions (namely where the heck Grima came from). From a general story standpoint, it also meanders for the middle third with the Valm arc. But it's also doing so for the sake of legacy references to Gaiden.

But I'll be damned if the characters aren't great.
 
I played all three houses in TH and played another route through my favorite house, didn't bother with the church route, played the dlc and had to stop myself from a 5th playthrough. Engage...I still have 7 chapters left and unless something changes between now and then I will probably just finish the optional battles and DLC, and probably never touch it again. Not saying it's a bad game just not amazing like TH but to be honest I'd be surprised if another Fire Emblem ever gets close to it. 80 MC is fair for this game.
 
Thunder84 said:
Setting aside that Awakening’s story was apparently a trainwreck (which I don’t agree with at all, I just found it boring) I’d rather have a story that’s a complete disaster than one that’s a complete snoozer.

Engage’s story feels like a mix between the intrigue of Birthright (AKA astoundingly boring) and the character intelligence of Conquest (everyone’s an idiot), and the end result is a story that’s technically better than Fates, but a whole lot less interesting. I at least could laugh at Fates, and was interested in continuing to see just how catastrophic the story would become. I get nothing like that out of Engage.
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That's a completely fine argument and I understand where you're coming from, I think Fates story is such a mess that while I can and will make fun of it for the rest of time it also kind of ruined all the characters in the game for me to a point that I can't even consider them as real characters anymore, especially Corrin and Azura.
Linkstrikesback said:
Only fates is worse than this, anyone saying awakening is, either doesn't remember anything about Awakenings writing, story or character wise, or just has a real raging hate on for the game that pushed the series to the mainstream audience.

If awakening was written like engage was, you'd have had things like Lucina in her first appearance Meeting Chrom magically fix her bad future because every problem in Engage is introduced to the players and then immediately resolved, sometimes without even changing cutscene. There's only two exceptions to that in the game as far as I've gotten and I doubt it's going to change.
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I like Awakening and I've played it 3 times (my last run was 3 months ago so it is still pretty fresh) and I found it stunning how badly it gets after the mid game (pretty much after the Lucina reveal) and I generally think Engage has a better story so far (I'm near the end so maybe it can nosedive and change my opinion). But still that's my opinion so if you disagree that's ok.
 
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Hailinel said:
Awakening isn't a bad game, but I won't go to bat for the strength of its narrative. It rides on a loose connection to Marth's era with flimsy world building that doesn't really do a good job of establishing the link between the eras. Shadows of Valentia actually went in and retroactively addressed some of its bigger questions (namely where the heck Grima came from). From a general story standpoint, it also meanders for the middle third with the Valm arc. But it's also doing so for the sake of legacy references to Gaiden.

But I'll be damned if the characters aren't great.
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I always thought Lucina’s arc,
the desperation of having returned from a post-apocalyptic future to pretend to be a legendary folk hero and change the past, the army being her parents and their allies (who are Lucina’s friends parents),
was way more interesting than Robin. I loved that sense of determination, the knowledge of what’s at stake, way more than the generic amnesiac PC. If anything, Robin just undercuts what is the narrative strength of the game. But then, I feel that way about Byleth and TH too. Just not so much about Corrin and Alear though, mostly because Fates and Engage are the stories of those lead PCs, whereas Awakening and TH are the stories of the lord units, not the PC strategists that keep chucking them offstage.
 
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Hailinel said:
Engage isn't a bad game, but its story is very firmly gunning for being a celebratory anniversary title.
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I’ve seen this sentiment a lot, and I personally don’t really understand it. There’s hardly any ties to previous games in the series beyond the Emblems simply existing in Elyos. The story is very much focused on its own characters, its own world, its own Fell Dragon, and it (in my opinion) fails spectacularly at all of it. The only two story relevant Emblems are Marth and Sigurd, and they add almost nothing of value. Nothing about this game really feels celebratory of the franchise beyond the surface level stuff: replace the Emblems with entirely unique characters, and the story doesn’t change in the slightest.

The only part that does feel like a deliberate callback is the paralogues, but even then the “story” for each of them boils down to “fight me to improve your insert character attribute here”. If it weren’t for the map designs being direct callbacks, there’s nothing here from a narrative perspective that feels intrinsically tied to the franchise’s history.

If you’re enjoying the story, great, more power to you. But to me, the “anniversary story” description I’ve seen feels more like an excuse for the lackluster writing than anything, because to me the story hardly feels like a franchise celebration in the first place. It feels like its own narrative that has characters from the previous games pasted on as collectibles.
 
I can only hope the next game will be closer to Three Houses again. There's certainly a middle ground to be found between the more mechanical satisfaction people get out of Engage, while offering a more interesting and better presented world, story, and characters, as Three Houses did.
 
Gambit said:
That is inexplicable to me. I'd have thought more time and potentially being further in the game would make critics like it more.
The tactical aspect is so far beyond anything that Three Houses offered that I don't understand the reviews unless they really all just liked the Persona aspect.

Having said that, I too prefer Three Houses characters, for example, but this is mechanically the best FE since at least Conquest.
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Conquest was also divisive. It had some of the best gameplay in the series at the time, but everything else was the worst thing ever. Then came Three Houses and addressed the criticism of Fates. Perhaps reviewers feel this is a step back again.
 
Ahmed said:
Conquest was also divisive. It had some of the best gameplay in the series at the time, but everything else was the worst thing ever. Then came Three Houses and addressed the criticism of Fates. Perhaps reviewers feel this is a step back again.
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I think it’s that FE’s core battle gameplay has been very good for decades. So even while Engage is the best it’s ever been (IMO), it’s fairly incremental improvements that you really need to dig into the battle system to find, whereas the dull, predictable cut scenes and story are literally the first thing a reviewer is going to see.
 
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I am enjoying Engage, the gameplay is very solid and I honestly prefer it over Fates's, but outside of that I definitely agree that it's a step back from Three Houses.
I get that writing a deep narrative wasn't the main objective for this game, but frankly, that should not be an excuse and the fact IS's first in-house non-remake game after Fates isn't much better writing-wise (even borrowing some plot points from that game), doesn't inspire much confidence in their ability to write a compelling story for future games.
Imitatio said:
I can only hope the next game will be closer to Three Houses again. There's certainly a middle ground to be found between the more mechanical satisfaction people get out of Engage, while offering a more interesting and better presented world, story, and characters, as Three Houses did.
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I don't know how feasible it would be, but I think that having the KT writers that worked on 3H handle the story while IS develops the game could be the way to achieve this.
 
Xorhan said:
I am enjoying Engage, the gameplay is very solid and I honestly prefer it over Fates's, but outside of that I definitely agree that it's a step back from Three Houses.
I get that writing a deep narrative wasn't the main objective for this game, but frankly, that should not be an excuse and the fact IS's first in-house non-remake game after Fates isn't much better writing-wise (even borrowing some plot points from that game), doesn't inspire much confidence in their ability to write a compelling story for future games.
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Yeah. You can still have a very simple narrative but with sharp writing and exciting scenes. Engage’s issue is that it’s a simple narrative that is entirely predictable, with very dull writing and scenes as the massive cast stands around watching stuff happen again then doesn’t even have anything interesting to say about it.
 
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Thunder84 said:
I’ve seen this sentiment a lot, and I personally don’t really understand it. There’s hardly any ties to previous games in the series beyond the Emblems simply existing in Elyos. The story is very much focused on its own characters, its own world, its own Fell Dragon, and it (in my opinion) fails spectacularly at all of it. The only two story relevant Emblems are Marth and Sigurd, and they add almost nothing of value. Nothing about this game really feels celebratory of the franchise beyond the surface level stuff: replace the Emblems with entirely unique characters, and the story doesn’t change in the slightest.

The only part that does feel like a deliberate callback is the paralogues, but even then the “story” for each of them boils down to “fight me to improve your insert character attribute here”. If it weren’t for the map designs being direct callbacks, there’s nothing here from a narrative perspective that feels intrinsically tied to the franchise’s history.

If you’re enjoying the story, great, more power to you. But to me, the “anniversary story” description I’ve seen feels more like an excuse for the lackluster writing than anything, because to me the story hardly feels like a franchise celebration in the first place. It feels like its own narrative that has characters from the previous games pasted on as collectibles.
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Engage has subtle and overt references to every entry that came before. Most directly, this is of course through the Emblems and everything around them. But the story and map designs (including the non-Paralogue maps) sprinkle in nods to the whole series. Even so, I wouldn't expect the notion of it being an anniversary title to be a controversial take.

PixelKnight said:
I think it’s that FE’s core battle gameplay has been very good for decades. So even while Engage is the best it’s ever been (IMO), it’s fairly incremental improvements that you really need to dig into the battle system to find, whereas the dull, predictable cut scenes and story are literally the first thing a reviewer is going to see.
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Yeah. Conquest gets pushed a lot as peak Fire Emblem by gameplay-first fans. But the narrative is a poorly written mess of conflicting ideas, nonsensical plot points, thinly defined or non-existent logic, and aggravating characterization. It should not come as a surprise to anyone that some FE fans will never enjoy it because of that.

I mean, seriously. I've said this before, but the entire Fates cast present in Fire Emblem Warriors feels better realized in that spin-off than they do in Fates.
 
Hailinel said:
Yeah. Conquest gets pushed a lot as peak Fire Emblem by gameplay-first fans. But the narrative is a poorly written mess of conflicting ideas, nonsensical plot points, thinly defined or non-existent logic, and aggravating characterization. It should not come as a surprise to anyone that some FE fans will never enjoy it because of that.

I mean, seriously. I've said this before, but the entire Fates cast present in Fire Emblem Warriors feels better realized in that spin-off than they do in Fates.
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Agree entirely here, Fates was an absolute mess in terms of narrative logic and characters. Engage isn’t a mess, it’s straightforward. But it’s just that I found it a really dull and predictable fantasy-war-by-the-numbers when it also really needed some great cut scenes and sharp dialogue from the cast to lift that up too, and deliberately shut down one of the few occasions where that had a chance of occurring in order to return to its status quo. I just found it even more frustrating when some of the dialogue in the optional support scenes that players might not even see is great.
 
Hailinel said:
Ah, here's the discourse to replace the Edelgard Discourse.
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Still, it's nice that we've moved on from "Persona fans need to play a real Shin Megami Tensei game" to "Persona fans need to play a real Fire Emblem game."

And like, I have played a real Fire Emblem game. A little genre-defining classic that goes by the name of Tokyo Mirage Sessions #FE Encore? Do not question my credentials.
 
PixelKnight said:
I think it’s that FE’s core battle gameplay has been very good for decades. So even while Engage is the best it’s ever been (IMO), it’s fairly incremental improvements that you really need to dig into the battle system to find, whereas the dull, predictable cut scenes and story are literally the first thing a reviewer is going to see.
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I have yet to play Engage so I can't comment on that, but I'd argue that Awakening and Birthright were the weakest in some part of the gameplay. In map objectives and mechanics to name some. It was all seize/route the enemy in forgettable maps. Fates had dragon vein, but I barely found they added anything to the gameplay aside from a few exceptions. Everything else has always been great.

I just can't understand why they can't go with both great gameplay and character writing. Every FE game before Awakening had nailed it. Reading how we're back to one-tone, boring characters from Awakening and Fates is really disappointing.
 
Yeah at least we can discuss Engage without bringing Edelgard or Persona into it. Hiya Papaya!
 
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Hailinel said:
Engage has subtle and overt references to every entry that came before. Most directly, this is of course through the Emblems and everything around them. But the story and map designs (including the non-Paralogue maps) sprinkle in nods to the whole series. Even so, I wouldn't expect the notion of it being an anniversary title to be a controversial take.
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Guess I just haven’t seen them then, because I haven’t picked out any of that. Maybe I’ve just been to busy on my phone or something, I’ve honestly stopped paying attention at certain points because I just don’t care about the story at all.

Regardless, I’m not saying that it’s not an anniversary game. It most certainly is. I’m just saying that the story doesn’t reflect that well, nor does that count as an excuse for the lackluster writing and worldbuilding in my book.
 
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I mean is the gameplay even that good compared with, say, 3H?

They’ve still not managed to make permadeath work in this series: it’ll always continue to be a giant waste of time that nobody takes seriously because, unlike XCOM 2, you can’t recover from bad RNG with freshly trained troops (no option to have them doing some kind of training while you’re on missions either), and most people just seem to restart instead of persisting without characters.

Weapon triangle isn’t that fun, especially in the earlier chapters when you have 1.5 sword users and almost every enemy has an axe.

Battalions and gambits have been removed, and now the battles feel diminished in scale. Gone are large battles, replaced by a bunch of misfits running around towns.

A lot of the levels I’ve played don’t feature large diversity in terrain, you’ll get a tonne of bushes and maybe a fort if you’re lucky. Nothing too interesting that really shakes the boat.

And, of course, it’s not like you’re straight into the action after each battle. First you have to fuck around petting animals and shit, and The Somniel still takes a substantial amount of your time before battle, but without being able to hang out with genuinely good characters.

Overall it feels like the gameplay is marginally improved in some aspects, worse in others, all accompanied by the absolutely catastrophic setback in story.
 
I think what hurts Engage's story is the presentation of it. Using an example of a similar scene from Three Houses and Engage
When Veyle steals the Emblem rings and the time crystal, we don't really see how she steals them, we just get a "you're too slow" and she's somehow holding all of them while everyone's still standing in place not moving. The game seems to imply it's because Alear had the time crystal that she intentionally dropped for them, but we're told this and not shown it. On top of all that the scene is done in engine so the scenes looks and plays out like any other scene in the game despite how significant it is to the narrative. By comparison, when Jeralt dies in Three Houses, you're immediately hit by a beautiful, animated cinematic to alert the player this is an important scene. Jeralt is stabbed, and Byleth instantly thinks to use their time rewind powers to save him which is a nice blending of gameplay mechanics and story. Another villain teleports in to block Byleth's attack, so Jeralt still ultimately dies, but most players aren't likely to feel that the story is insulting them or that the characters are morons compared to how Engage handles it's scene
 
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Ahmed said:
I just can't understand why they can't go with both great gameplay and character writing. Every FE game before Awakening had nailed it. Reading how we're back to one-tone, boring characters from Awakening and Fates is really disappointing.
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That's some pretty strong revisionism. Earlier FE titles very light on narrative (a lot of story details were confined to the manuals). Shadows of Valentia took the approach of taking everything in the manual and putting it in the game itself, and then fleshing things out on top of that. Even the FE1 remake Shadow Dragon didn't go far enough in addressing its Famicom era narrative limitations.

I'd also argue that FE6 is the worst FE that most FE fans have never played, with a number of its story flaws ending up addressed in FE7. Also, its gameplay suffered from Roy's extremely late promotion that rendered him a load for a large portion of his own game.
 
BassForever said:
I think what hurts Engage's story is the presentation of it. Using an example of a similar scene from Three Houses and Engage
When Veyle steals the Emblem rings and the time crystal, we don't really see how she steals them, we just get a "you're too slow" and she's somehow holding all of them while everyone's still standing in place not moving. The game seems to imply it's because Alear had the time crystal that she intentionally dropped for them, but we're told this and not shown it. On top of all that the scene is done in engine so the scenes looks and plays out like any other scene in the game despite how significant it is to the narrative. By comparison, when Jeralt dies in Three Houses, you're immediately hit a beautiful, animated cinematic to alert the player this is an important scene. Jeralt is stabbed, and Byleth instantly thinks to use their time rewind powers to save him which is a nice blending of gameplay mechanics and story. Another villain teleports in to block Byleth's attack, so Jeralt still ultimately dies, but most players aren't likely to feel that the story is insulting them or that the characters are morons compared to how Engage handles it's scene
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Yeah.
Even after Alear reclaims the time stone, they still don’t remember to use it when various NPCs die right in front of them. If you’re going to make ‘rewind a few seconds’ a story element as well as a gameplay one, it just doesn’t work when a phenomenally powerful ability to change reality, the card up your sleeve (aside from the emblem rings), is forgotten by the PC force when they've had it all along and, in the one cut scene that the enemy have it, they use it. It’s just insulting bad, a sort of literal deus ex Machina combined with a sort of situational stupidity that the cast can be martial geniuses on the field but only passive observers in cut scenes
.

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Yeah I don’t think Alear drops it deliberately. It’s that Vayne bizarrely manages to steal the Crystal when the cast is, as usual, only passive observers in critically dangerous confrontations, somehow not one of a dozen characters was watching her while others monologued. And then she uses that to steal the rings too. And then the party immediately forget that that’s an option when confronting enemies with rings for the rest of the game .
 
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BassForever said:
When Veyle steals the Emblem rings and the time crystal, we don't really see how she steals them, we just get a "you're too slow" and she's somehow holding all of them while everyone's still standing in place not moving. The game seems to imply it's because Alear had the time crystal that she intentionally dropped for them, but we're told this and not shown it.
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Pretty sure that's never implied. Veyle literally just walks up and steals it off of Alear while they're distracted by the Hounds introducing themselves. That's all there is to it. She then uses it to get the Emblems back, even though that’s not how the time crystal works, never bothers to use it to kill Alear, somehow loses track of it when Ivy steals it, and then the time crystal as a whole is dropped from the story entirely.

I’d say that qualifies as Fates tier writing, personally.
 
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PixelKnight said:
Yeah.
Even after Alear reclaims the time stone, they still don’t remember to use it when various NPCs die right in front of them. If you’re going to make ‘rewind a few seconds’ a story element as well as a gameplay one, it just doesn’t work when a phenomenally powerful ability to change reality, the card up your sleeve (aside from the emblem rings), is forgotten by the PC force when they've had it all along and, in the one cut scene that the enemy have it, they use it. It’s just insulting bad, a sort of literal deus ex Machina combined with a sort of situational stupidity that the cast can be martial geniuses on the field but only passive observers in cut scenes
.
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They really just need to stop trying to justify the rewind mechanic in universe. Just give the player X amount of redos that is explained to the player in a tutorial and call it a day.
 
BassForever said:
They really just need to stop trying to justify the rewind mechanic in universe. Just give the player X amount of redos that is explained to the player in a tutorial and call it a day.
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Agree entirely,
it’s just daft and causes more problems than it solves when the party will use it for a minor rewind on the field but never to stop a fated death in a cut scene.
 
Chaos Theory said:
I mean is the gameplay even that good compared with, say, 3H?
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I would definitely say so.
Chaos Theory said:
They’ve still not managed to make permadeath work in this series: it’ll always continue to be a giant waste of time that nobody takes seriously because, unlike XCOM 2, you can’t recover from bad RNG with freshly trained troops (no option to have them doing some kind of training while you’re on missions either), and most people just seem to restart instead of persisting without characters.
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This is a your-milleage-may-vary deal, but you know, this is why casual exists? For people who don't want to interact with it? There's nothing wrong with how permadeath works in the series at large, and it's not like Engage would or could do anything to "fix" it.
Chaos Theory said:
Weapon triangle isn’t that fun, especially in the earlier chapters when you have 1.5 sword users and almost every enemy has an axe.
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I would argue the exact opposite. The weapon triangle is the best it's ever been (read: it actually matters) and the fact that Alear is basically your only sword user in the intro gives them a powerful niche.
Chaos Theory said:
Battalions and gambits have been removed, and now the battles feel diminished in scale. Gone are large battles, replaced by a bunch of misfits running around towns.
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This is just a standard of the series. TH was one of the few that gives this feeling. I'll agree here, I do miss feeling like battles are huge.
Chaos Theory said:
A lot of the levels I’ve played don’t feature large diversity in terrain, you’ll get a tonne of bushes and maybe a fort if you’re lucky. Nothing too interesting that really shakes the boat.
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I don't even really know how to take this. I'll admit Fates was crazy in a good way with how tiles could work, but I have no idea what you could really expect.
Chaos Theory said:
And, of course, it’s not like you’re straight into the action after each battle. First you have to fuck around petting animals and shit, and The Somniel still takes a substantial amount of your time before battle, but without being able to hang out with genuinely good characters.
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You can easily skip all that, even on the highest difficulty. Also I personally definitely prefer this cast over FE1, 3, Fates, and Awakening's casts.
Chaos Theory said:
Overall it feels like the gameplay is marginally improved in some aspects, worse in others, all accompanied by the absolutely catastrophic setback in story.
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You can probably tell, but I would say the gameplay is more than marginally improved. The story itself is obviously terrible, but I still think the support and bond writing is really good.
 
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Meh, I feel like 80 is a bit too harsh, especially given how Fates, on the other hand, is one of the highest rated games lol. Although, to be fair, at least Fates was ambitious. The story in this game is incredibly bad while also being really boring and unexciting. I do wonder if this is the "B-team" game from IS though, given that it's "just" an anniversary game and seemingly started development after FE4R.

Actually, speaking of Metacritic and FE4R, (as long as it's executed well) I wonder if it'll end up scoring a lot higher than Engage... like, high 80s, maybe even low 90s.
 
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PixelKnight said:
Agree entirely,
it’s just daft and causes more problems than it solves when the party will use it for a minor rewind on the field but never to stop a fated death in a cut scene.
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If the FE team reallt wants to somewhat justify it in universe, just do something like what Katana Zero does. State the rewind is the lord realizing "that plan won't work" during the battle and giving a different order. It keeps the explanation simple, and doesn't require any kind of justification for why bad things happen later on in the story.
 
Chaos Theory said:
I mean is the gameplay even that good compared with, say, 3H?
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Yes, I think so. There’s lots of additions I like, from clerics being martial artists, to bosses being more mobile and tougher, to the missions being more varied.
Chaos Theory said:
They’ve still not managed to make permadeath work in this series: it’ll always continue to be a giant waste of time that nobody takes seriously because, unlike XCOM 2, you can’t recover from bad RNG with freshly trained troops (no option to have them doing some kind of training while you’re on missions either), and most people just seem to restart instead of persisting without characters.
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I don’t mind if people play on casual, or on classic with rewinds all the time, if it makes it more fun for them. I rarely rewind if it means going back a full turn, I’m happy to let units die as the newer recruits are deliberately strong units. To each their own. Some people view it as shepherding everyone safely to the end, some are more mercenary. It’s all good.

Chaos Theory said:
Weapon triangle isn’t that fun, especially in the earlier chapters when you have 1.5 sword users and almost every enemy has an axe.
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Disagree, I love the new weapon triangle. You have few sword units for the first few easy chapters but your main one is your strongest unit. Breaks only really matter when a single unit gets swarmed, so it encourages the player to take advantage of it to break tough enemies so weak allies can safely attack them and get xp.
Chaos Theory said:
Battalions and gambits have been removed, and now the battles feel diminished in scale. Gone are large battles, replaced by a bunch of misfits running around towns.
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Kind of agree. I like battalions but pair-up or engage feel pretty similar. FE has always had this wierd scale thing where the army is referred to as massive but only key characters appear in a cut scene. Or how a swordsman and a fort are both one square in size.

Chaos Theory said:
A lot of the levels I’ve played don’t feature large diversity in terrain, you’ll get a tonne of bushes and maybe a fort if you’re lucky. Nothing too interesting that really shakes the boat.
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Partially agree. More diversity in cover would have been good. I made good use of the ‘covert’ classes (archers, thieves, wolf knights) to take advantage of the cover I could find though, pillars, bushes, forts etc.
Chaos Theory said:
Overall it feels like the gameplay is marginally improved in some aspects, worse in others, all accompanied by the absolutely catastrophic setback in story.
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Agree the story is dull and less interesting than TH. Nothing is left as a mystery, but an issue is that you can guess it all before it happens. It’s like the complete opposite.
 
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Chaos Theory said:
I mean is the gameplay even that good compared with, say, 3H?

They’ve still not managed to make permadeath work in this series: it’ll always continue to be a giant waste of time that nobody takes seriously because, unlike XCOM 2, you can’t recover from bad RNG with freshly trained troops (no option to have them doing some kind of training while you’re on missions either), and most people just seem to restart instead of persisting without characters.

Weapon triangle isn’t that fun, especially in the earlier chapters when you have 1.5 sword users and almost every enemy has an axe.

Battalions and gambits have been removed, and now the battles feel diminished in scale. Gone are large battles, replaced by a bunch of misfits running around towns.

A lot of the levels I’ve played don’t feature large diversity in terrain, you’ll get a tonne of bushes and maybe a fort if you’re lucky. Nothing too interesting that really shakes the boat.

And, of course, it’s not like you’re straight into the action after each battle. First you have to fuck around petting animals and shit, and The Somniel still takes a substantial amount of your time before battle, but without being able to hang out with genuinely good characters.

Overall it feels like the gameplay is marginally improved in some aspects, worse in others, all accompanied by the absolutely catastrophic setback in story.
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Not to me. I prefer TH mechanics and map designs over Engage so far, but I’m only up to chapter 11 in Engage. The game focuses too much on the engage mechanic, hit rates bullshit keeps coming again and again and again, and skills inherited from the rings are some of my dislikes to the game.

Anyway, once again, and by none’s surprise, defense on Engage is based on shitting TH as a game liked only because “persona” mechanics.
 
Pavolink said:
Anyway, once again, and by none’s surprise, defense on Engage is based on shitting TH as a game liked only because “persona” mechanics.
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No one is doing this. Any comparisons to TH are solely due to that one being the most recent and most popular before.

EDIT: No one is doing it here. Thanks Thunder 84 :p
 
Metroid said:
No one is doing this. Any comparisons to TH are solely due to that one being the most recent and most popular before.
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I agree that nobody is doing that in good faith, but I’ve absolutely seen some arguments along those lines out in the wild. They aren’t worth taking seriously of course, but they definitely exist.
 
Thunder84 said:
I agree that nobody is doing that in good faith, but I’ve absolutely seen some arguments along those lines out in the wild. They aren’t worth taking seriously of course, but they definitely exist.
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I should clarify that no one is doing it here. The internet is wild and unreasonable for sure.
 
Pavolink said:
Not to me. I prefer TH mechanics and map designs over Engage so far, but I’m only up to chapter 11 in Engage. The game focuses too much on the engage mechanic, hit rates bullshit keeps coming again and again and again, and skills inherited from the rings are some of my dislikes to the game.

Anyway, once again, and by none’s surprise, defense on Engage is based on shitting TH as a game liked only because “persona” mechanics.
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Who is doing this here? I think I’ve been pretty even handed in saying what I prefer about Engage’s combat and what I think is bad about it’s writing.

Id rather not have FE chat on Fami bsed on want people offsite do or don’t think. I like reading what you all think, even when we disagree.

Edit- ok that points been clarified, moving on :D
 
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I took that as more poopooing the attitude around going from TH to Engage from reviewers specifically, but fair, that can easily be taken as bad faith
 
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Regardless of whether you play Fire Emblem for the tactics gameplay first and foremost or not, it's unavoidably a narrative and character driven experience, and if reviewers consider the plot and characters a step down from Three Houses, they're going to mark the game accordingly. And if Three Houses was your first ever Fire Emblem, going from it to Engage is going to be a real culture shock. So I get why it's a much more divisive game to general audiences, even if Fire Emblem fans eventually view it in a more positive light.
 
Three Houses is in my top 2 favorite of the sandbox style Fire Emblem games with Genealogy

Engage is in my top 2 favorite of the classic style Fire Emblem with Path of Radiance.

I'm not sure how you can straight face say you think 3 Houses has better map design then Engage unless you think flat, open areas is "good design".
 
Maybe I just haven't played enough Fire Emblem games, but I never really got why Three Houses' map design is so criticized - sure, I think Engage's maps are generally better, but not by a ton? I never noticed Three houses ones being that bad, really. It might help that I really liked having more movement in TH, it's something I really miss in Engage. And also just missing a ton of stuff in general, like the magic-range-extending relic accessories, defense accessories, battalions, way more options for class skills that seem to be way more useful, etc. It feels like other than the Engage system, everything else is much more limited and stripped-down.
 
hologram said:
Then I repeat: what you're telling me is "Fire Emblem typically has shockingly bad writing and isn't the series for people who want an engaging story to accompany their strategy gameplay"
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I mean this is pretty much true(although your wording is a bit strong)

i've played 7 Fire Emblem games over the years and the story in these games is pretty much just a vehicle for creating enough attachment to the characters to care about losing them in gameplay and for having an ingame reason for why you're doing these maps
 
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SammyJ9 said:
Maybe I just haven't played enough Fire Emblem games, but I never really got why Three Houses' map design is so criticized - sure, I think Engage's maps are generally better, but not by a ton? I never noticed Three houses ones being that bad, really. It might help that I really liked having more movement in TH, it's something I really miss in Engage. And also just missing a ton of stuff in general, like the magic-range-extending relic accessories, defense accessories, battalions, way more options for class skills that seem to be way more useful, etc. It feels like other than the Engage system, everything else is much more limited and stripped-down.
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I think the criticism comes from entries like Engage, Fates Conquest, etc., the Three Houses maps aren't as puzzle-like. Three Houses opts for open maps for the most part, which is really to the game's benefit because the class progression system is so open that the devs can't fully anticipate what sort of force the player will have cultivated by even the halfway point. Also, some players put a premium on the diversity of map objectives and don't like it when every single map is "route" or "kill the boss".
 
Hailinel said:
That's some pretty strong revisionism. Earlier FE titles very light on narrative (a lot of story details were confined to the manuals). Shadows of Valentia took the approach of taking everything in the manual and putting it in the game itself, and then fleshing things out on top of that. Even the FE1 remake Shadow Dragon didn't go far enough in addressing its Famicom era narrative limitations.

I'd also argue that FE6 is the worst FE that most FE fans have never played, with a number of its story flaws ending up addressed in FE7. Also, its gameplay suffered from Roy's extremely late promotion that rendered him a load for a large portion of his own game.
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I think you quoted the wrong person. I haven't mentioned story anywhere in my previous comment.

I'm talking about character writing.
 
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SammyJ9 said:
Maybe I just haven't played enough Fire Emblem games, but I never really got why Three Houses' map design is so criticized - sure, I think Engage's maps are generally better, but not by a ton? I never noticed Three houses ones being that bad, really. It might help that I really liked having more movement in TH, it's something I really miss in Engage. And also just missing a ton of stuff in general, like the magic-range-extending relic accessories, defense accessories, battalions, way more options for class skills that seem to be way more useful, etc. It feels like other than the Engage system, everything else is much more limited and stripped-down.
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Generally speaking I would say Fire Emblem as a whole, as a series, has sucked at map design. There are exceptions (Conquest was a total failure at pretty much most things it tried, but it was a work of genius with map design), but on the whole, FE map design sucks in general.

Thunder84 said:
Echoes on Alm’s route begs to differ.

I guess Celica’s side is interesting for all the wrong reasons though.
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Yeah, okay, Echoes is worse lol
 
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SammyJ9 said:
Maybe I just haven't played enough Fire Emblem games, but I never really got why Three Houses' map design is so criticized - sure, I think Engage's maps are generally better, but not by a ton? I never noticed Three houses ones being that bad, really. It might help that I really liked having more movement in TH, it's something I really miss in Engage. And also just missing a ton of stuff in general, like the magic-range-extending relic accessories, defense accessories, battalions, way more options for class skills that seem to be way more useful, etc. It feels like other than the Engage system, everything else is much more limited and stripped-down.
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I never was bothered by Three Hosues maps until the Fire Emblem fanbase told me that they were bad. I still don’t get it but whatever. Engage has a few annoying maps like chapters 11 and 16. No 3H has annoyed me as much as those have.
Formula Zero said:
The salt for THs being more popular and better received than this game is amusing
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True but that also means that Three Houses fans now have to deal with a brunt of hate for liking one of the best received games in the series.

“Wow Three Houses fans are the worst thing that has happened to the fanbase.” I just like the game, man, piss off.

“Three Houses fans only like this game for shitty Persona mechanics, go read a book, casuals!” Again I just like the game. Sorry for liking the characters and story…
 
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